Underranked & overranked countries

[Boywing]

I have a feeling (OooHoo) that Swedish players are a bit stronger than their rank.
Maybe half a stone or more... Statistics might tell.

Almost off topic...
At the same time they have less EGF GoR points compared to their rank.

For example a Swedish 1D might have 2000 rating points which should be normal for a 1k.
when he get up to 2100 rating points he is usually 2D.
We would need a large injection of rating points to reflect our real strength.

[flOvermind]

Chinese 5d can make KGS 9d, but this thread has nothing to do with online vs IRL ranks.

/Mats

But you could use online ranks as "anchor" in the comparison. The problem with EGF ratings is that you won't find many games of players from e.g. Sweden vs. Portugal. While online ranks in general are not very reliable, they are based on more games and the population mixes better (at least within timezones). So you could pick known players from various countries, and compare the rating of their "serious" KGS account (if they have one) with the EGF rating.

Regarding over-/underranked countries: The only personal experience I have is playing against Japanese players. There I was estimated (independently by a 7-dan and a pro) as being 3-dan. My EGF rating is 4-kyu, but that's rather unreliable because I don't play many tournaments. My impression of the strength of Japanese players is that they are generally 3-4 stones overrated in comparison with EGF, *except* the 6-7 dans. These two ranks seem to cover the huge range of roughly 3-dan EGF to nearly pro strength.

[ZeroKun]

Chinese 5d can make KGS 9d, but this thread has nothing to do with online vs IRL ranks.

/Mats

This is because that is the highest rank for China. To get 6 and 7 dan, you have to win regional and national tournaments.

[mohsart]

@boywing
I guess that you refer to stronger than our ranks compared to the average European ranks.
I'm not sure about that. It may be that the German and UK players are weaker (I don't know). But the Finns, Czech, Slovakians, Russians, Poles, Maybe French and Dutch (this is me guessing, so neither a complete nor guaranteed to be true list) are stronger.

As for GoR, I'd prefer to take a discussion about it in another thread.
For me, since Sweden doesn't use it, it only matters in some (very few) international tournaments.
On a European view, it is used so differently so I believe it to be more or less useless, or irrelevant, in this discussion.

@flowermind
Maybe, but I think it'd be difficult.
For example, I play even IRL with players that are ranked up to 5 stones stronger than me on KGS.

@zerokun
Good point, Chinese 5d player Su Yang made 6d when he stayed in Sweden, KGS 8-9d (Jeffchang, Finnish8d)

/Mats

[Boywing]

@Mohsart Yes you understood me right. And as you say maybe Sweden is in the middle with a good rank system if we take all European countries in account. But I still have a feeling we are a little bit under ranked. I have to play tournaments in other countries to figure it out.

I might be off topic again but this thread inspired me to write a blog post
European Go Tournaments and Rating

[tapir]

the Czech rankings are particularly strong. for example, take the Brno tournament(as far as I know the biggest tournament in Czechia) and look at foreign vs. Czech players on stronger kyus. I can also tell from experience. I am sure that a lot of Czech 3k-4k can make shodan in a lot other Euro countries.

there is a difference between "strong" rankings and a broken system. by disallowing rank resets (and this is as i understand the main feature of the czech implementation), the improving players play each other and compete for the same points. leading to deflation (over all) or outdated ratings (for some players). i guess there are a lot of czech players whose GoR looks like this one http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/Pl ... y=10201510 or that one http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/Pl ... y=10233509 - do they really lose their strength despite continuously playing? (even ales cieply himself has trouble in maintaining his rank.)

[Laman]

there is a difference between "strong" rankings and a broken system. by disallowing rank resets (and this is as i understand the main feature of the czech implementation), the improving players play each other and compete for the same points. leading to deflation (over all) or outdated ratings (for some players). i guess there are a lot of czech players whose GoR looks like this one http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/Pl ... y=10201510 or that one http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/Pl ... y=10233509 - do they really lose their strength despite continuously playing? (even ales cieply himself has trouble in maintaining his rank.)

well, there is deflation, but the system should be able to counter it with proper parameters, i think. the problem arises from that the system is implemented differently in different countries and parameters are set to the average...

rank resets are not really disallowed in Czechia, i myself jumped from 17k directly to 10k without any complaint, they are just not usual. how do you implement the system in your country? example: till last tournament i was 4k. i am young, improving player (i hope), someone could say i have already strength for being a 2k. so should i reset my rank and enter the tournament as 2k instead of 4k? i don't think so - i will be 2k when my GoR says i am 2k, what would be otherwise its purpose?

for larger gaps between strength and rank, resets are natural, but there are not many players improving by 3 or more stones between following tournaments

[henric]

@boywing
I guess that you refer to stronger than our ranks compared to the average European ranks.
I'm not sure about that. It may be that the German and UK players are weaker (I don't know). But the Finns, Czech, Slovakians, Russians, Poles, Maybe French and Dutch (this is me guessing, so neither a complete nor guaranteed to be true list) are stronger.

Firstly I don't think the above statement is correct.
Secondly I think that you and a couple of other commenters in this thread are underestimating the need for statistical significance a lot.

What you should do is to calculate "performancee ranks" according to the suggestion in the 2007 Nordic Go Journal article, and compare them to actual ranks. Or you should look at the winning statistics between equally ranked players from different countries in a systematic way (it is not enough to look at some single tournament, except perhaps the European go congress. There are also possible selection problems as discussed in the same article and one needs to be confident that they are not too big). For sure some individual players are "overranked" or "underranked", in every country, but this does not allow you to draw any conclusions about an entire country. For the record I won't believe any statements in the style of "my feeling is that " this country is over ranked compared to that country, they are not objective and not based on sufficient amounts of data.

The country-wise comparison of GoR can be carried over into rank comparison using the EGD table that was referred to early in this thread. Judging from such an argument I don't believe that there are differences between average ranks in different european countries that are as big as several stones, although 1-2 stones average differences might occur. Differences between the countries with many players are smaller I think. Clearly I'm talking about ranks above 10k, or above 5k, I don't think there is any point at all in discussing the accuracy of double digit kyu ranks.

I would advise people who are interested in matters like this to use the EGF rating database, which contains the relevant data, from every year since 1996. The EGD source code should be open for this purpose. The best significance is obtained of course if statistics are made from the results game by game. Due to ignorance in database handling I never made any serious attempt with that myself, I mostly just tried to get along by using the average tournament-wise GoR increments of players. I'm sure many of you people who read and write here can easily do better than that, if you just care to spend a little time on it.

cheers,
Henric

[mohsart]

@boywing
I guess that you refer to stronger than our ranks compared to the average European ranks.
I'm not sure about that. It may be that the German and UK players are weaker (I don't know). But the Finns, Czech, Slovakians, Russians, Poles, Maybe French and Dutch (this is me guessing, so neither a complete nor guaranteed to be true list) are stronger.

Firstly I don't think the above statement is correct.

So you mean to say that you're sure that Swedish players are (in general) underranked compared to average Europeans?

/Mats

[tapir]

rank resets are not really disallowed in Czechia, i myself jumped from 17k directly to 10k without any complaint, they are just not usual. how do you implement the system in your country? example: till last tournament i was 4k. i am young, improving player (i hope), someone could say i have already strength for being a 2k. so should i reset my rank and enter the tournament as 2k instead of 4k? i don't think so - i will be 2k when my GoR says i am 2k, what would be otherwise its purpose?

for larger gaps between strength and rank, resets are natural, but there are not many players improving by 3 or more stones between following tournaments

i played my first tournament as 3k, after that there was never a need for a rapid rank reset.

if someone says i might be 2 stones stronger, but i am not sure of it then i wouldn't. but if you hit 1 dan at kgs or igs i would strongly advise you to reset your rank to 2k or 1k EGF.

[henric]

@boywing
I guess that you refer to stronger than our ranks compared to the average European ranks.
I'm not sure about that. It may be that the German and UK players are weaker (I don't know). But the Finns, Czech, Slovakians, Russians, Poles, Maybe French and Dutch (this is me guessing, so neither a complete nor guaranteed to be true list) are stronger.

Firstly I don't think the above statement is correct.

So you mean to say that you're sure that Swedish players are (in general) underranked compared to average Europeans?

/Mats

That's not what I'm saying.
It is probably true, but I already said that I don't think the differences are big anyway.

I was saying that your list is wrong, in my opinion.

Here is an example of an argument based on reasonable statistics
(http://goforbundet.se/ng/200901.pdf pp. 12-13):

In EGC 2008, for the players with GoR>2000, players from
SE gained on average 4 GoR points per game (based on 171 games)
CZ gained 2 Gor points per game (68 games)
PL gained 1 GoR point per game (70 games)
RU lost 1 GoR point per game (109 games).

Approximately one can argue that (Fig. 2, p. 12) this means that
SE players were underrated by 80 GoR points wrt average,
CZ players underrated by 40,
PL players underrated by 20
RU players overrated by 20.

As far as GoR is concerned and in this rating interval, your ordered list is wrong.
What about ranks then?
We can correct for the rank-rating differences listed in the EGD table that was mentioned,
which gives AVERAGE differences (in GoR points, http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/Stats_Country.php):
SE:-73
CZ: +25
PL: -24
RU: -5
These numbers are not for the rating segment >2000, I believe that those numbers
must be lower at the high end of the rating list, so they overestimate the correction.

Still, the result would be expected rank differences
SE: 80-73=+7 wrt european average (so the difference is less than 1/10 stone).
CZ: 40+25=65 wrt european average (i.e. a bit more than half a stone)
PL: 20-24 = -4 wrt average,
RU: -20-5 = -25 wrt average.

So the ordered rank strength list becomes:
CZ, SE, PL, RU.

It should be clear from this discussion that the uncertainties are pretty big,
even though hundreds of games are taken into account. But IMO it is enough to conclude that
there is no empirical ground for your ordered list.
Another conclusion that should be obvious is that the rank "strengths" are not
VERY different, the differences are SMALL.

In the rating interval 1000-2000 FR, PL, CZ all gain more GoR points per game than SE, but FI
gains less.

It is easy to improve on these estimates of rank strengths, using the results
in individual games more directly, but I don't believe that the results will be
MUCH different from the above.

It is a worth while effort to monitor the differences, by studying winning
percentages:
* If the ranks and ratings are drifting apart, we could have a big problem.
* It is unfair if big discrepancies develop. They could have an effect both
on the results lists in tournaments, and on admission to top groups,
sponsored events etc.
* It is interesting in itself to understand how well the rating- and
ranking systems perform.

But I think it's wise to investigate the matter empirically, rather than
guessing.

cheers,
Henric

[manastin]

i am kgs 4d. if i goto korean goclub then i will say i am 3kyu.
goclub rating in korea is very different from rating you are familiar with.
i guess it is the result of playing for money on everygame people sandbagging too much.
just my thought.

Can you explain little bit more, how they play for money in the club? Sounds interesting..

[tj86430]

i am kgs 4d. if i goto korean goclub then i will say i am 3kyu.
goclub rating in korea is very different from rating you are familiar with.
i guess it is the result of playing for money on everygame people sandbagging too much.
just my thought.

Can you explain little bit more, how they play for money in the club? Sounds interesting..

Probably each player wagers the same amount, and winner takes the pot.

[manastin]

i am kgs 4d. if i goto korean goclub then i will say i am 3kyu.
goclub rating in korea is very different from rating you are familiar with.
i guess it is the result of playing for money on everygame people sandbagging too much.
just my thought.

Can you explain little bit more, how they play for money in the club? Sounds interesting..

Probably each player wagers the same amount, and winner takes the pot.

Yes but, i would like to know more, for example are there any time limit or any other restrictions...If you play for money, you can make any dirty cheats then..

[topazg]

IIRC, you can wager on points margin (per point) or just on result, and they each have their distinct name.

magicwand, do per point wagers have an upper limit? What about resignations?